


Love it (if we made it)

by onotherflights



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 18:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15977609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onotherflights/pseuds/onotherflights
Summary: It started when they were young.JJ was standing at the end of his driveway in his superman pajamas, his small feet bare. His father had sent him to put out the trash cans for the morning and he’d just gotten to the curb when he saw the light. Then there he was, only six years old. He sped past JJ’s house, the headlight on his bike and the reflectors on the spokes of his wheels glowing embers.Then he stopped all of a sudden. He clutched his breaks and stuck out his foot. JJ noticed his shoes were too big.Or; Yuri and Jean are childhood friends and grow up on different pages of the same story.





	1. Training Wheels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badaltin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badaltin/gifts).



> happy birthday Elliott!!! I’m not cool enough to make something by hand like you did for me, but I did use my hands to write this lil thing. I hope you like it and i'm sorry it's so late in the day. I just wanted to say thank you for your amazing friendship over this last year, you’ve helped me in more ways than you’ll ever know. And you also know i’m pretty bad with words unless it’s in an angsty narrative so I hope you enjoy this one! 
> 
> (Ps- first part is not a surprise at all since u and millson already read it but the second part is all for u bb. Shoutout to milli for the sneaky edits.) 
> 
> Title is from The 1975 but the song has almost nothing to do with this story oops.

It started when they were young. 

JJ was standing at the end of his driveway in his superman pajamas, his small feet bare. His father had sent him to put out the trash cans for the morning and he’d just gotten to the curb when he saw the light. Then there he was, only six years old. He sped past JJ’s house, the headlight on his bike and the reflectors on the spokes of his wheels glowing embers. 

Then he stopped all of a sudden. He clutched his breaks and stuck out his foot. JJ noticed his shoes were too big. 

The boy on the bike whipped his head back to stare at him in the driveway, his pale blonde hair looking blue under the light of the moon and the shadow of the street lamps. He threw an accusatory glance and looked awfully offended for someone who was riding their bike past curfew. He looked like he was about to ask JJ what he was looking at, but somehow Jean found his voice first. 

“What are you doing?” 

It seemed obvious enough. 

“What does it look like?” 

Jean shrugged, “It’s nighttime, though. Where’s your mom?” 

The little boy didn’t answer him. He just looked back down at his handlebars, toying with the white tassels that sprung out of the ends. When JJ walked up the sidewalk to stand beside him, he didn’t flinch. He just looked up quickly, then away. 

“What do you want?” 

JJ could have asked his name, but he already knew it. His last name, anyway. His parents were always talking about the Plisetskys that had moved down the street. They talked in French and in whispers, as if JJ wouldn’t understand just because they used some of the words he hadn’t learned yet and a quieter tone. He figured the little boy must belong to them, one of five siblings. He had even more than Jean, so lucky. 

Instead, he pointed to the training wheels at the back of the bike. They were worn-down, barely touching the ground. He didn’t need them anymore. 

“Do you want me to take those off?” 

The little boy finally looked up at him then, big green eyes and a hesitant smile with missing front teeth. 

“Okay,” he nodded.

He got off the bike and the walked back to Jean’s house, bringing the bike into the garage. It only took a minute for Jean to unscrew the bolts, putting them back into his daddy’s workbench just as he’d been taught. He put the training wheels in a drawer too, just in case the boy needed them back later. 

“Thanks,” he muttered when Jean was done, hopping back onto the seat. He was about to take off into the night again. 

“Wait,” JJ pleaded, his fingers tugging at the hem of his pajama top. He’d put the screwdriver in his shirt pocket, the letters  _ JJL _ embroidered there in red thread. “What’s your name?” 

The boy looked back at him again, his pink tongue peeping out through his missing front teeth in the yellow garage light. 

“Yuri Plisetsky,” He answered, a little bit of a lisp in his soft voice. He didn’t really know how to say his last name, but he tried. “What’s yours?” 

Jean’s mom had taught him never to tell his name to strangers, but Yuri wasn’t really a stranger. He was just a little kid. 

“Jean-Jacques Leroy,” He stated proudly, sticking out his chest just like superman did in the cartoons. It made Yuri laugh, and he looked up at heaven and back again. 

Jean heard someone coming down the stairs inside the house.

“I’ll see you at school, Yuri Plisetsky.” 

At that, Yuri’s smile faded slightly. He just nodded, his hair brushing the tops of his ears. Then he turned back and pushed the pedals with his too-big shoes. He rode easily, as if there had never been training wheels there at all. 

By the time Jean’s father came out to check on him, he found his son standing still in the garage with a screwdriver in his front chest pocket, staring out into the night.    
  
  
  


JJ learned quickly. 

He learned that reading was really, _ really  _ hard. School was hard every day, because no matter how hard he tried he always seemed to get that look from his teachers. He’d disappointed them again. Sometimes they sent notes home to his mom and dad. He hid them in the drawer in his daddy’s workbench, right next to Yuri’s training wheels.

He also learned more things about Yuri. He found out Yuri was six and a  _ half _ , because he mentioned it every chance he got. He found out Yuri liked the blue flavor of pop icies the best, and he thought batman was way cooler than superman (he was wrong about that, but Jean let it go because Yuri was still little). He learned Yuri didn’t go to the same school that Jean did. It wasn’t fair, he didn’t even have to wear the stupid uniforms or go to church every morning. He learned that Yuri didn’t even know any of his prayers. That was okay though, because he was still little. It took JJ a long time to learn all his prayers. 

He learned not to ask Yuri why he didn’t want to go home at night. 

He learned to never ask about Yuri’s mom, not ever. His own mother had a few questions. 

“Are you sure you want to play with Yuri? He’s. . . He’s a lot smaller than you, JJ.” 

“Yeah Mommy,” He said, sure as the wind.  Once Jean set his mind to something, there was nothing to stop it from lingering there. Especially special things. 

And Yuri Plisetsky was surely something special. 

“He’s my best friend.”


	2. Jump the Fence

“Ugh, thank you. You’re like my best friend,” a stranger said, the pills sliding from Yuri’s palm into hers. She didn’t even count the money as she pushed it against him.

Yuri thought maybe they had a class together last year,  but he couldn’t really remember. The past eight months at least had been a blur.

Most of it had passed on nights the same as the one he was in now, the pulsing bass sliding slick against the walls. When Yuri left the bathroom and glided down the hallway, running his hands against the neutral-colored walls to keep steady, he saw family portraits lining the walls. He saw his classmate’s face as a child, innocent and missing baby teeth. There was even one from church, maybe a first communion. Yuri figured the same classmate was probably on his knees in the same way three rooms over, praying to a different god behind closed doors. 

Yuri swayed as he rounded the corner back into a den room, flopping down on a sofa only occupied by a couple melting together on the far end. They continued trading secrets between their teeth until he put his boots up on the guy’s lap. When they parted and looked at him, it was only with vague interest. They went back to each other, uncaring if Yuri used them as an extension of the furniture. Most people were like that. They just wanted to be used. The other half of the world were the ones using. It made for an easy business model. 

Yuri didn’t take anything from his pockets and he didn’t take any of the drinks people offered him. He didn’t have time to be high, although sometimes he felt it anyway. Maybe there were too many chemicals in the air. 

It didn’t take long for him to be discovered. He was always looking for Yuri. Maybe in another life, they were prey and hunter. Maybe it was still that way. 

“Yuri,” he greeted, feet firmly planted on the carpet as he looked down on him. 

“Otabek,” Yuri answered back. 

Once they established that they knew each other’s names there was no more talking to be done. They didn’t need to know any more about each other than they already did. 

Without another word, they left the party hand in hand. 

 

 

 

There were plastic stars on Otabek’s bedroom ceiling. 

Yuri knew they were glowing green remnants of his childhood, but it made him feel weird whenever he looked up at them in the dark. Yuri didn’t know him when they were kids, but he could sense that they had vastly different experiences. He hoped so, anyway. 

He only looked up at the artificial light for a moment before he turned back onto his side. Otabek was asleep beside him, blissed and content in a way that Yuri could only dream of. He wished he could sleep without thinking about it. He wished he could stay in the safe bed and sleep next to the safe person and not want to crawl out of his skin. He wished safety didn’t feel like a trick of the light, but it was so hard to tell in the dark. 

Otabek was a light sleeper, so when Yuri untangled himself and slipped away he stirred. He paused, considering it, but let Yuri fall out of his hold. Yuri’s lungs expanded. His limbs were his own again. 

As he put his clothes on he didn’t have to hear anything ridiculous like  _ stay _ or  _ don’t go tonight _ . Otabek was quiet by nature, and he wasn’t the type to beg even in his most vulnerable state. 

Yuri opened the bedroom window and crawled out, his feet touching the dewy, suburban grass when he landed. He left it open behind him, because it was the least he could do. Otabek would never have him in the morning, but he would have the sunlight. Yuri would give him every ounce of morning’s first light, but Otabek would never know the way the beams danced and gilded his hair. 

He crouched down and sped past rose bushes and hedges, slipping away from the scene like a wraith. He’d learned his escape long ago. The only thing that recognized him every time was the motion light by the garage. The yellow light flooded the pavement, revealing the sleek black frame of Otabek’s motorcycle. Beside it, the muscle car that Otabek and his brothers rebuilt. Yuri passed between the two easily, sliding his fingertips against the camaro’s slick, black exterior. 

He’d met Otabek two summers ago in that same driveway. He and his brothers had just gotten what was then a piece of junk home and Yuri rode past on his bike. By the time school started that year, Otabek was driving him home. Well, at least to the front of his street. He never let him pull up to his house, even in the rain. 

When things were still new, Yuri thought that maybe Otabek would take him away in that fast car. They would drive away and slip into new bodies, grow new lives until they were different people. Change was always the fantasy. But Otabek still had the artificial stars in the heaven of his room, and he only ever brought Yuri back to the door he locked behind himself. 

There was only one way for Yuri to run away, and it was something he could always rely on. 

As he walked down the quiet street of the pre-planned and perfectly trimmed neighborhood, he pulled out his phone. He scrolled down his contacts until he got to the letter J. There was only one name there. Only ever one. 

He called, and the line connected on the second ring. 

“Hey training wheels,” he said, voice like a salve and a saint, “are you dead in a ditch somewhere?”

Yuri cracked a smirk. Jean always knew what to say.

“Not yet, sorry.”

It was their usual exchange. They’d moved past  _ hellos _ and the trading of names long ago. 

“Where are you?” Jean asked then, his voice even softer now that he wasn’t teasing. It was late but it was about to be early. They seemed to exist together only in that in-between time. 

Yuri didn’t answer his question, but Jean could hear him even in the silence. 

“I need to run away,” he admitted softly, a secret from the moon hanging above. 

“I’ll drive,” Jean said immediately, “I’m coming to get you now.” 

Yuri could hear him moving, but he waited for a moment until he heard the clinking of keys. He just wanted to remember it was real. Jean would run away in the middle of the night if only Yuri asked him to. 

“No, just meet me at the track.” 

Silence filled the space between them. All Yuri could hear was the sound of his own feet as he moved across the sea of suburban pavement. 

Finally, the keys settled back into place. 

“Alright, I’ll meet you there.” 

  
  
  
  
  


Yuri used the key he kept hidden in his boot to enter without breaking. He passed between rows and rows of lockers, shedding layers as he went. Jean’s clues to find him were a jacket here, a thick rubber bracelet there. By the time he got to the door he wanted to find, he was only in socks, shorts, and an oversized Nirvana t-shirt. He still smelled like Otabek’s room, so he needed to fix that. 

The memorial plaque outside the door that opened up to the track read the name of Jean’s father. He had died three summers before in a car accident. Because of the money the Leroy family had contributed to the school over the years, the new track and field would have been named after the man anyway. His death just made it eerie.

It was a sad story, a father of four killed by a drunk teenager from the rival school. Like all sad stories, it had faded into nothing more than a cautionary tale. 

Jean still said a prayer with the memory of his father before every football game. 

Yuri knelt down, finding the running shoes Jean stowed away for him right where he’d last seen them. He slipped his feet inside them and quickly tied the laces. His fingers lingered on the golden plaque as he passed by, touching the span of a man’s life in just a single stroke of engraved letters. 

He flipped on the lights as he closed the door, watching the field flood with color. 

Then he ran away. 

It didn’t matter that he was going in one big fucking circle. It didn’t matter that no matter how fast he ran there was no chance of him sprouting wings. Getting out was hardly the point of running away. 

All that mattered was the burn of his muscles, the erratic breaking and mending of his ribcage as pushed air out and breathed stardust in. 

All he could see was a blur until he rounded another lap he wasn’t counting. The blur had changed slightly. 

He stopped and laid down on the thick asphalt, looking up at the stars above him. They were as real as the blood rushing through him, the crashing waves inside him. He breathed steady and let his bones go still. He heard footsteps, and then Jean was standing above him and blocking the view. 

“Hey, training wheels.” 

Yuri bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes. He wished that Jean had to work just a little bit harder to get a smile from him. He didn’t need to look to know that the space beside him was being filled. No arms reached out to ensnare him, but the slightest brush of fingertips against his own was enough to keep him there. 

When he finally did open his eyes again, Jean was looking back at him. His blue eyes were tired but clear. Yuri imagined that maybe he’d been up late helping his sister with her reading homework. More likely that he had helped her and then attempted his own. There was a glint of gold out of the corner of Yuri’s eye.

He looked closer, turning on his side to examine it. There was a small gold cross around Jean’s neck. Yuri looked at the man that lay between them, golden and sealed against the small cross that hung over Jean’s heart. He looked back up to find ocean eyes roaming over him, too. 

Jean tucked the chain into his shirt, but his eyes never trailed away from contact. 

“It was a gift,” he explained softly, and it was all Yuri needed in way of an explanation. It was a gift from  _ her _ . 

It was an unspoken rule between them. They didn’t talk about Yuri’s supposed boyfriend, so they also didn’t talk about Jean’s supposed girlfriend. 

Yuri couldn’t afford his own food sometimes, much less a gold chain to give to someone else. Surely Isabella Yang could just use her daddy’s credit card. That was the orbit of the world she and Jean occupied. Not that he was bitter about it or anything. 

Yuri lay back down to look up at the stars. He was slick with sweat but his lungs kept him breathing, somehow. 

“Why did you want to run away tonight?” Jean asked carefully. “I thought you were with your boyfriend.” 

Yuri blinked. Apparently they were breaking the rules tonight.

“He’s not my boyfriend, JJ.”

It was Jean’s turn to roll onto his side and look at Yuri. 

“You could have fooled me.”

Yuri smirked, “Like that’s hard to do.” 

Jean leaned over to push his shoulder in playful annoyance. He could never really tell when Jean leaned in that way if it meant something more. Sometimes he thought that maybe Jean was going to kiss him instead of treat him like a friend. 

It was hard to know what the right thing to do was when Jean was close and the stars above them were the real thing. He wished they could be, too. 

Something had shifted between them in the silence. Jean lay back down flat on his back like he could only admit what he wanted to say to the blank slate above them that some people called heaven.

“Do you love him?” 

Yuri sighed, “It doesn’t matter if I do.” 

“It does to me.” 

It should have been an automatic answer, absolutely affirmative. Otabek said the right things, did all of the things that Jean could never do for him. It should have been good enough. 

Yuri just couldn’t lie to Jean. 

“I don’t know,” he answered, “I wish i could.” 

“That’s not the same thing.” 

“Is that the way you feel about her?” 

Jean looked at him, half sad and half scared. The stars didn’t hide a damn thing, or maybe it was the field lights. 

“It’s not the same thing,” He said again. 

  
  
  


They found their way up to their feet and walked around the track in a daze. There were other things they both could have been doing, but they went around and around together. Once Yuri started he never really knew how to stop. Jean-jacques Leroy wasn’t built with brakes. 

They were talking about something else, lingering on the edge of the grass, when Jean spoke out of turn. He was nervous, and it was so easy to see through. 

“Well, maybe he got your virginity, but I still have your training wheels in my garage.” 

Yuri scoffed, shoving him so that he tripped over his own feet and had to walk backwards to recover. “How many times did that run through your head before it came out of your mouth?” 

He flashed pearl white teeth, “More than I would admit.”    
  
  
  


As the sun began to peek out from behind the trees, they walked to the fence at the edge of the field in silence. With morning coming, the spell was broken. They had to go home before mice began to nip at their feet. 

JJ was the first to mount the chain link fence, and Yuri watched as he climbed up and pushed himself off the ledge like he’d done it one hundred times. It had been at least three hundred. 

“Wait,” he whispered, and it was all Jean needed to turn around with his eyes bright, hopeful. 

Yuri thought about what he wanted to happen if he could pick up the pen and dip into the ink of the night skies they always met underneath.

He could picture it all in his head so clearly, like they existed in a photograph of what the right ending looked like. In his mind, Jean would lean against the chainlink fence and be close enough to touch. Yuri could feel himself close his eyes, press his lips against Jean’s. He could feel his fingers curl around the barrier between them. He could tear it down. 

But that was just fantasy, and reality wasn’t the same thing. They found themselves together at night, but every dream ended eventually. In reality, they were still separated by a fence, but Jean was standing on the other side of a vast ocean. It was impossible to cross. The cold cross that Jean wore on his neck, a gift from her that he was supposed to love, shone a warm gold in the morning light. 

He wanted to lie to Jean, for once.

He wanted to say something awful like  _ I need you _ or  _ I can’t be here without you _ .

He wanted to tell the truth and say something unforgivable, like maybe  _ I love you. _

Instead, the words caught in his throat. 

“I’ll miss you,” he choked out, pity filling his fingertips. He ached to reach out and stop the sun rising, stop the gold shining in his eyes and forcing him to choose the light. All he wanted was night-black hair and ocean eyes the color of a moonlit pool. He didn’t want a sunrise with anyone else, but he couldn’t tell Jean the truth. 

“I’ll miss you,” he repeated, forcing steel through his teeth, “when you go away. For school.” 

It was two weeks away but it wasn’t going to change anything. Jean’s face was puzzled, as if he were trying to sift through the words and find what was true underneath.  

He made a promise that Yuri knew he wouldn’t be able to keep.  

“Don’t worry, training wheels, I’ll be around.” 

Yuri watched him go, and he could feel the page turn. He could feel the light flooding in without permission, and he knew he had to face the morning and whatever it would bring. 

_ I’ll be around _ , he had said. 

_ You’ll be around, Jean.  _

_ But I never promised that I would be.  _

Yuri was alone again when he jumped the fence and started walking.    
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)) pls wish my good pal Elliott a very happy birthday in the comments, maybe send a tissue his way.


End file.
